Cello
 

i know nothing about classical music, but i am looking for good cello works to enjoy.

i grabbed some random things yesterday labelled as cello.

i'm very much enjoying Bach's cello suites as performed by Edgar Meyer, and want more along these lines.

tried Debussy, and it was too flowery and fanciful.
tried Brahms, and it was too epic and invasive.

but this Bach i found s nice and melodious.

please advise!

Look for anything recorded by Yo-Yo Ma or Mstislav Rostropovich. Both are great cellists and have recorded many different works by different composers.

thanks, i'll have a look. but i'm really more interested in finding composers than performers...

I know they're not classical, but definitely give Apocalyptica a try. Three cellists doing Metallica covers... pretty awesome stuff. Reflections is permanently ingrained in my brain whenever I read Vampire: The Masquerade because I listened to that album whenever I read the book. Sorry I couldn't recommend pieces from the classical era that are cello heavy, but definitely give Apocalyptica a try.

interesting stuff! i just checked out a few videos, including one of them performing Hall of the Mountain King live. fun to watch.

i'm sure i'd appreciate it more if i knew anything about metallica, but fun nonetheless.

If you like the Bach cello suites, try Handel's Passacaglia - Theme and Variations for solo cello.

Dvorak's Cello Concerto is one worth checking out.

many thanks, i'll check those out tonight :)

I love cello too and that's why I like also Apocalyptica.

Can you recommend me some other band with cello if here exists something like this?

Petula07, if you don't know Rasputina yet, do check them out. it's not classical - more goth really - but it's wonderful music.




some of the old members from Rasputina also do solo cello stuff, like Zoe Keating and Julia Kent. both are great.

I strongly recommend this album:

http://www.jettmedia.com/images/129_51usC_K02lL.jpg

thanks SATCHMO, getting it now

well as i explore this, i'm realizing how different the same piece can sound depending on who plays it.

i found Bach's cello suites by Rostropovich and i love how they sound, but the same pieces played by Pablo Casals just irritate me.

i've also realized that i really don't like piano together with cello. and i don't like most concertos i've heard - there's just too much going on. though i've been enjoying Vivaldi's cello concertos, they're all strings and they sound exquisite!

If you're down with string quartets, I highly recommend The Takacs Quartet performing Bartok's 6 String Quartets. Absolutely one of my favorite classical recordings.

listening now. it's a bit too complex for my tastes. i don't think i'm ready for it yet!

Might I recomend Concerto for Cell in C Minor? It's a bit on the depressing side, but it's wonderfully written.

Music isn't notes on a page. Notes on a page are ink. I promise. What makes notes music, is the musician. The element we like to call Hu for Human. Music is made from the interepertation of the musicians, which is why the same piece can be played in hundreds of different ways. Even ensembles look at the same piece of music and play it differently than another group. Luckily, when you purchase a piece of music, you recieve the right of what's called "Freedom of Interpertation", or "Poetic Liberty".

I've listened to something by Arvo Part called Fratres for Cello and Piano, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. But whatever floats your boat.
lolwut?
Why isn't that quote showing up???

It's not showing up because you have two opening quote tags, and no closing quote tags. A closing quote tag looks like this: [/quote]. Change the second quote tag to a closing quote tag by adding the /.

:rofl:
omg that was so stupid.

It's ok, we all make mistakes. After all, if we didn't, how would we ever learn?

[QUOTE]It's ok, we all make mistakes. After all, if we didn't, how would we ever learn?[QUOTE]


Indeed, we never would.

You forgot the closing tag too.

Yeah, I know. I just love irony.

Saint Sean's Allegro Apassionato is a fantastically tricky piece to learn; very fast, very high in the cello's register, difficult chords, (try flattening your 2nd finger across two strings,while holding down your 3rd finger on another. Not easy). But if you can play it well it sounds epic, a very show off-y kind of piece haha.

Vivaldi's 9 sonatas are great to learn as well if you fancy yourself some baroque period stuff.

If you want to try studying Dvoraks cello concerto in B minor, I would start with the 2nd movement first, as its the easiest. Then the 3rd, and finally the 1st. The first is the most difficult, the flying octaves are incredibly difficult. It's Dvorak didnt give two sh!ts about how demanding it was going to be! lol.

good luck fellow cellist!

The thing I love the most about cello is that it has the range that it can go from playing in the lower register in Gbmin, to the mid-upper registers in Fmaj. Cello makes my favorite chord sing: FminSus.

I love cello and I am still searching to find some cello bands :)

I was talking today with one violoncello player of our small orchestra...
He had his own czech cello band, but unfortunatelly they don't exist anymore.
Here is at least some video...




Probably everybody knows Apocalyptica and Rasputina but I got two other names - Hevein and Angher...
I am not sure how it is, I didn't try their music yet. It's metal.


Hevein




Angher

Rostropovich is probably the best cello player out there..check him out

^^
i second that. i also adore janos starker.

bach's 6 cello suites played by janos starker are incredible



zoltan kodaly - cello sonata

fournier's version is also incredible:

Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata in G minor Op.19 - rostropovich and horowitz



one of my favourite pieces of music though i am partial to the rostropovich - dedyukhin version

Exciting! I'm learning some basic cello at school right now and you really have to put your mind to it. But the result of practicing proper playing technique is a beautiful, deep, rich, resonating sound from a lovely instrument.

Can you read sheet music? There are probably some decent beginner's tutorials available that will start you on your journey, but a lot of those are not catered to aural learning.

No, it won't be a big deal at all to learn and memorize bass clef. Right now I have to learn alto and tenor clef, and that's a little more challenging!

I like to use mnemonics as a tool to help my students learn to read music. I'll share one with you. For bass clef I always use these:

Lines (bottom to top):

G - Garbage (bottom line)
B - Bags
D - Don't
F - Fall
A - Apart (top line)

Spaces (bottom to top):

A - All (bottom space)
C - Cows
E - Eat
G - Grass (top space)

You're welcome! There's another one that goes Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always, but I've never used it myself. Maybe because I'm not a boy :)

I love the Cello.

Dunno if people are still interested in others listing really nice cello works but if so then there's a Cello Nocturne by Chopin that sends my head into a lovely flutter. Don't know which one though!!! Starts feeling quite sad, will have to look it up when I get home.

Recently I have been exploring cello works by lesser known composers.

Yesterday I found several cello pieces that I like by a Romanian composer, Liana Alexandra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liana_Alexandra). Liana Alexandra composed the cello piece posted below in which she plays piano to accompany her husband, the cellist:

Liana Alexandra - "Fantasy on JERUSHALAYIM SHEL ZAHAV" for Cello and Piano
Serban Nichifor (Cellist) and Liano Alexandra (Composer and Pianist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzOcniGJv-o

Unfortunately, I learned that Liana Alexandra died in 2011 at a fairly young age (63). This made me sad because I had been listening through a variety of her scores at a sheet music website and didn't realize until the end that she had died. Her last scores were uploaded in 2011, which makes sense now.

On the positive side, I'm glad Liana Alexandra got to spend so much of her life creating music and performing it with loved ones (both of which I also enjoy).

Cello with beatboxing

As has already been discussed, when people think of cello works, nearly always the first stop is Bach's Suite's for Unaccompanied Cello. While Casals brought modern attention to the work, I think the person most associated with the piece is Yo-Yo Ma. In fact, he (Ma) made Inspired by Bach, where he collaborated with artists from various disciplines, essentially making videos for each of the suites. I think it's OOP now, but it's well worth watching if you can find it. My favorite version of the suites is played by Ralph Kirschbaum and I think that recording can be found in its entirety on youtube.

Another performer/work pairing which has become all but synonymous is Jacqueline du Pre's interpretation of Elgar's Cello Concerto. Her opening is searing, channeling anger, melancholy and resignation and sorrow, making it (in my opinion) one of the most unforgettable moments in music. du Pre ended up losing her ability to play, and eventually her life at age 42 to multiple sclerosis. I think the best version of the piece is the recording she made with Sir John Barbirolli and is readily available.

Beethoven's Cello Sonatas (all 5 of them) are really good - no surprise considering the source. I have the set by Anne Gastinel (cello) and Francois-Frederic Guy (piano). I love how young French artists can make music written by a cantankerous German sound so good. As a side note, their version of the Brahms Cello Sonatas is quite good too.

John Tavener's The Protecting Veil (Stephen Isserlis, cello) comes to mind as a modern work that deserves a wider audience. It uses cellos to set up a sort of echo chamber, within which the soloist does his thing. The work is religious in nature as well, coming from Tavener's Russian Orthodox faith.

There's also the new breed of composer/performers like Julia Kent and Zoe Keating.

While Ma and Rostropovich are indeed great cellists, there's more out there than just their work - the fun is in the discovery of someone new (for me at least).